Every second summer holidays, it seemed, we were sent to stay with cousins at Holsworthy army base (west of Sydney), where one of our uncles was an army officer. Normally it was more a case of enduring a couple hot, boring weeks, but the last year, when I was 18 and just out of school, the holiday got a lot more interesting. That year, my younger cousins had had a cubby house built for them, and this cubby became the focus of a hyped up battle between the "girl army" and the "boy army".
The incident that has stuck in my mind, is a time we tied up my oldest girl cousin (19 at the time), Stephanie, ostensibly to extract information about possible cubby raid plans. Stephanie had earlier gone off her nut at people pissing in the pool, so we thought it might be fun if she were to have an accident, so to speak. There was a box of dress up clothes in the cubby, so we took the longest pieces of clothing and tethered Steph's wrists together, and then secured them to a table leg with masking tape. The same was then done with her legs; Steph enjoyed the attention, so there was no real struggle. In our best mock military voices, we informed Steph that until she gave details about the planned cubby invasion, we would hold her captive - but not to worry, we had Coke for her to drink, so she didn't get parched on such a hot day. We then ignored her for an hour or so while we drew up our self-important plans, which Steph listened to intently.
